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Hello Fall and a Kitchen Dilemma.

Fall is officially here! It’s still pretty warm outside here in Indiana, but the humidity has dropped considerably so it’s very pleasant. I am one of those people who thinks that pumpkin spice improves absolutely everything, so I’m loving the coffee, the baking, the cookies…all of it. Pumpkin is one of my very favorite flavors (actually, it’s one of the four food groups–coffee, pumpkin, peppermint and chocolate!) and I am knee deep in trying to organize a trip to the pumpkin patch/apple orchard!

Our leaves are already starting to change, which kind of threw me a little. When we lived in Ecuador, there were no seasons, and I don’t remember the leaves changing this early back when we lived in Ohio. We have 26 trees on our property (be careful what you pray for–you just might get it!) and at least 18 of them will drop their leaves sometime in the next eight weeks or so. I’m very excited for fall colors in our yard, but I may feel differently after I’ve raked them all up!

The Mr. is still in Louisiana for work–he’s got several more weeks to go yet. My heart just breaks when I think about all of the devastation that they have endured. We have family in the Baton Rouge area, and it’s always a worry when we see something else weather-related headed their way.

With Mr. still gone, this leaves me to keep things going here at home. So far we’ve done pretty well. P and I managed to get the grass cut (it looks like it was cut by me and a 12-year-old, but it’s cut!) and I drained and dismantled the swimming pool all by myself. That little event may or may not have caused me to blow my testimony a couple of times. It needed to dry out completely before I could put it in storage, so I spread it out on the driveway. I noticed one evening that it was dry and ready to fold up and decided I would wait until the next day. Of course it rained that night. After much talk of smiting and calling down holy wrath upon it, I finally got it dried out and folded up in the garage. We may have to discuss whether or not we are putting it up next summer!

I also got a few things done around the house. We’ve only been here a little over two months, but for some reason it feels like a lot longer. One of the things that I am still getting used to is having time to get things done. When we would come home on furlough, I would have a list of things that I wanted to do and see and buy…and invariably we ran out of time, or money, or both, and I would head back to Ecuador feeling like I would never get to do or see whatever it was I missed. Since we’ve been back, I am constantly having to remind myself that we can take our time–we aren’t going anywhere any time soon!

Our house has a very small kitchen. It’s adorable and I love it…but it’s small. It has a tiny little pantry in the back, and the previous owners had removed the door. When we moved in, we had a set of shelves from our rental house that we tucked into the space between the fridge and the pantry, to have a place to put more stuff (because we need more stuff, right?). It looked like this:

It took about five weeks for me to decide that this just wasn’t working. It’s too big for the small space, it looks very cluttered, and the open pantry was making me a little crazy. Fortunately, the previous owners had left the pantry door downstairs in a closet in the garage. I grabbed a can of black chalkboard paint (black chalkboard spray paint is one of my craft “must have at all times”) and got to work. I gave it a couple of coats of paint, then bought a new set of hinges and a new doorknob. Behold…

SO much better, right? The darling little sign was on clearance at Michael’s, and was the perfect decoration for my new door. I also organized the pantry (I TOLD you I have a fondness for all things organizational!) and overall I’m much happier with the whole arrangement.

That still left me with the dilemma of what to do with the too-large shelf full of all-the-things. I took a good look at what was on the shelf, and examined my cupboards to see what I could store there. It turns out that everything except for my canisters fit neatly into the cupboards! Since I am limited on counter space, I didn’t want to put the canisters anywhere on the counters, so I turned to my muses—otherwise known as All Things Pinterest–and got to work.

Menard’s had unfinished wooden crates for $8 each. I bought two, and then bought four decorative shelf brackets. Enter my handy dandy chalkboard paint and this is the result.

(They are not crooked–it’s the angle of the picture). Aren’t they darling? I am ridiculously pleased with how they came out, and at less than $20 each I felt like it was a very economical solution to my storage problem. The metal shelf unit is now in the basement–Mr. can decide what to do with it when he gets home.

My kitchen feels much more open than it did before, and I am much happier with the closed pantry door than I was with the open shelving. Mr. and I are very anti-clutter, so it’s much better for everyone when we feel like things are neat and organized!

I will leave you with some lovely autumnal thoughts…go and have something pumpkin today!

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” ~George Eliot

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Hi! I’m Cyndi!

I love Jesus, my sweet hubby and my kids. I like sunny days. Antique shopping. Thrift stores and spray paint. Laughing until I cry. Country music. Good coffee. The perfect pen and a new journal. Read More…